The two thieves took a half-step back, fumbling for their weapons. "Stop that," squeaked Morgath. "You can't fool us with a simple trick like that!"

Jack grew taller still, now towering over both men. Wisps of steam escaped from his mouth when he talked, as his voice deepened into a low, menacing rumble. "I am a visitor from a far land," he continued. "I had hoped to pass peacefully among your kind, perhaps observe human customs, learn human ways, but I refuse to be assaulted with impunity, and I refuse to be hectored and badgered and threatened, and I refuse to have the two of you pawing through my personal effects. Despite my best efforts to avoid this, you have forced my hand, and so now I must rend the two of you limb from limb and feast on your steaming organs before your dying eyes!"

He finished by throwing back his head and bellowing in sheer ogrish rage, rolling his eyes and raising his huge taloned hands over his head as if to conjure down upon the two terrified thieves the very instrument of their doom with no further delay.

Morgath and Saerk stood petrified for one awful instant, gazing up like sheep standing under the butcher's knife, and then they broke and ran, abandoning the satchel and their truncheons in their haste to depart the vicinity. Jack roared after them as they fled pell-mell down the alleyway and bolted out in the street. Morgath turned left and Saerk turned right, a prudent tactic had they been in the correct position to execute the maneuver, which they weren't. As it so happened, they collided, the short one upending the taller, and the taller knocking down the shorter. Jack took two steps and roared again, at which point the two thieves yammered in terror, picked themselves up, and ran off screaming into the night.

Jack used the spell to assume the appearance of a uniformed city watchman and picked up his belongings. He could hear the screams of the two thieves, now fading into the cool distance. Sooner or later, the authorities would come running to investigate reports of a berserk ogre mage rampaging through the Anvil, and it wouldn't be wise to wait for that to happen. He changed his appearance back to normal and departed the scene, congratulating himself on his own cleverness. The night was cool and fresh, the air was sweet with rain, and even if he ached in the ribs and shoulders and arms from the drubbing the two thieves had given him, in the end he'd run them off.

He was only a block from his apartment when someone else threw a cloak over his head and pummeled him mercilessly to the cobblestones. Flailing wildly to tear the cloak from his face, Jack's arms were pinned, and then his assailant threw him face first into a hard brick wall, hammering a big fist into his kidneys two, then three times. Jack cried out and fell, only to be savagely kicked several times before he heard a voice through the red haze of pain.

"That's enough, Marcus. We're supposed to arrest him, which implies bringing him in alive."

A heavy boot kicked him once more in the stomach, doubling him up like a broken doll. Then the cloak was pulled away. A large pair of leather-booted feet stared him in the eye, and a little farther back a somewhat smaller pair of leather-booted feet of a more feminine slenderness waited their turn.

"This defies all probability," Jack coughed. "Two beatings in one night, commenced in the exact same fashion. I shall henceforward trust no man wearing a cloak."

"Hello, Jack," purred Ashwillow. The Hawk Knight knelt so that she was able to meet his eyes. "You've been quite a busy burglar of late, haven't you? Dueling wizards in the streets, socializing with the privileged classes, crawling around in Sarbreen doing who knows what… honestly, I don't see how you find the time."

"I know of several black-hearted scoundrels who bear me a striking resemblance," Jack wheezed. His guts ached as if red-hot skewers had been stuck through him. "I would love to help you, dear lady, but I am afraid I cannot be held answerable to their misdeeds."

"What did you steal for Elana?" demanded Marcus. "Where did you meet her? Time's running short, and I am not going to play games with you." To emphasize his point he dragged Jack to his feet and threw him against the wall with great disregard for both rogue and building.

Jack tried to straighten up but couldn't; his stomach hurt too much. He panted for a long moment, trying to master the pain. Someday, he promised himself, I am going to find out where Marcus lives, and then when he is on his way home from a late night at a tavern, I am going to jump out of the shadows and beat him with a board.

He considered whether or not he should tell them the truth about Elana. After all, he hardly owed her any loyalty. Three things stopped him: first, telling the truth was foreign to his nature; second, admitting that he'd unwittingly aided the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan didn't seem like it would make the Hawk Knights leave him alone; third, and most significantly, Iphegor the Black appeared in a sulfurous belch of smoke and screamed at Marcus, "There you are! Oh, now shall I have my vengeance upon you, wretched thief and craven mouse murderer!"

"I beg your pardon?" Marcus said, blank bafflement in his face.

"Remarkable," Jack managed.

Obviously, Iphegor had used some spell to transport him to the vicinity of the man who'd pillaged his tower and wrought the end of his familiar, because here he stood. But Iphegor did not know, could not know, that Jack was Jack and not Marcus, since the thief had used the seeming spell to take on the Hawk Knight's appearance during the unpleasant affair in the necromancer's tower.

Jack looked at Marcus and Ashwillow and straightened a little bit. "Oh, are you in for it now."

Iphegor, already in the process of casting some dire spell, hesitated half a heartbeat as he glanced sideways at Jack. The two knights goggled in amazement, still trying to grasp the implications of the sorcerer's spectacular appearance. Then Iphegor dismissed the small, well-pummeled popinjay before him as insignificant to his mission, stepped back, and raised his voice, conjuring a horrible doom down upon the unfortunate Hawk Knights. Marcus sprang toward the necromancer to halt his spell, while Ashwillow dove for cover.

Jack worked a simple spell and jumped straight up with all his might, carried aloft by dancing emerald energy. He gained the rooftop of Eldritch, Lightfoot, Findrol, amp; Company with one bound just as Iphegor's spell detonated under him, filling the narrow alleyway with black, searing flames that washed out into the street and erupted into the sky overhead. Jack risked one glance below, just enough to see a very singed-looking Marcus seize hold of Iphegor's throat while the wizard raised a very deadly looking wand to smite him again. Sorcerous black flames engulfed both the trading house and the building across the alleyway, burning weirdly without light but igniting the buildings nonetheless.

Ashwillow rose up from behind a high stone curb, only partially singed. She aimed a wicked crossbow in Jack's general direction, but before she could let fly with the bolt, Jack conjured a solid sheet of billowing vaporous fog in the alleyway, obscuring all vision. The knight's quarrel flew off over his shoulder.

"The roof! He's on the roof!" Ashwillow cried.

"Bugger the spy! Help me!" Marcus replied, striving to keep Iphegor's deadly wand from his face.

Jack turned and ran for his life. Behind him, spells thundered and steel rang in the fog and confusion as Iphegor and the Knights blundered and fought in the mists.

"You will not escape me so easily, thief!" shrieked Iphegor once, distantly, and then Jack abandoned the scene altogether.

Since it was clear that his apartments were under the surveillance of various parties that wished him ill, Jack elected to avoid going home. "The hour is late, drink has fogged my wits, and I desperately require sleep," Jack mused, perched on a rooftop several blocks away. A roaring fire filled with golden sparks marked the place where Jack and Iphegor had recently parted ways, and he saw no reason to return to the scene. "My various bolt-holes and haunts throughout the city may be watched tonight, so I need to find a place of comparative safety and seclusion."